DEATH OF GREAT MUSIC

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

NEW YORK -- [Regarding John von Rhein's] very perceptive article on the demise of BMG classics: This, of course, surprised no one whatsoever. The majors are no longer involved in recording concert music in any kind of committed way. There is not the interest at the companies nor the cultural infrastructure to support it.

Some good news is that small companies (you mention ECM, but Harmonica Mundi among others also comes to mind) have been most adventuresome. For example, to record collectors at least, there has been a complete revolution in the perception of Baroque music. I don't recall a time when so many operas by Handel, Charpentier and Lully were available in so many superb recordings. As for contemporary music, my specialty as a living composer, there is more available now than ever before and the quality of much of it is far greater than it was when I was growing up in the '60s and '70s. None of this music, however, is being released by the majors.

Two other points come to mind. The first is that, following the abandonment of concert music by the major record companies, I believe that an imminent and catastrophic implosion of symphonic music will occur in this country. There simply isn't the interest among even educated listeners to explore purely musical experiences. Once it starts, the collapse of the symphonic infrastructures (aside from a few superb museum orchestras like Chicago and Cleveland) will happen within a few years at the most.

The other point is that all of us who love and participate in concert music are to blame for the death of this great music, not merely a few dumb record executives. The rank and file musicians have created a price structure for their services that is beyond unwieldy, both financially and from a production standpoint.

The programmers froze the repertory into a highly conservative set of "masterpieces." With the repertory considered beyond any kind of significant change or challenge, no one, least of all curious new listeners, has any real emotional connection with the process of evaluating and critiquing any music in order to ingest it and make it their own. There is very little passion attached to the music.

Those of us who compose music are equally guilty of writing music for nearly 100 years that, with very few exceptions, never deigned to address the profound cultural upheavals of its time. The autistic self-involvement and cultural ignorance of some of our most esteemed composers is simply appalling and little discussed in an intelligent fashion publicly.

In the next 10 years, this music that you and I love will no longer be presented in the fashion that we have known throughout our lives. That's the very bad news. The good news is that the craving for a musical art that is, in some sense, profound will never die and concert music will morph into new forms, with new composers and a new audience.